In Winter
by starboarder
Summary: Jane and Edward's first winter together at Ferndean finds them snowbound and isolated from the world. But is their isolation a curse or a blessing? NOW COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

Anyone who had seen Ferndean Manor during the dark months would have been hard-pressed to imagine any person living there, much less a newly-wed couple. Indeed, only a small few of the parish could truthfully claim to have set eyes on the place at all, but what those few had seen, and what others, in their ignorance, imagined, combined with rumor and superstition to weave a net of gloom and doom around the secluded house. A general attitude of astonishment abounded at the tenants' decision to remain cloistered away on the remote estate, and the neighboring spinsters and housewives and even some of the more idle husbands tut-tutted amongst themselves, at a loss to comprehend the motives of the eccentric pair. It was common knowledge that Ferndean's reclusive owner had married a young heiress in summer, though how or why were details that never received a full answer. Immediate speculation assumed a marriage of convenience – perhaps he needed the money, perhaps she had a difficult family to escape. That affection might exist was not considered. As the couple made their first appearances at the parish church, speculations were revised somewhat. Some fondness there might be, perhaps some affection had developed between them. Roses, it was said, could grow out of brick walls. Yet the occupants of Ferndean did not linger after services, the gentleman returning quickly to the privacy of his carriage, his wife stepping out to thank the curate and make some remark on the sermon before rejoining her husband to be swept back into the strange sylvan twilight of the estate, inciting more curiosity than if they'd never been seen at all.

"Always in such a hurry to return to that wretched place!" remarked one woman to her friend as she stared after the retreating carriage. "'Tisn't natural! There's no Christian soul for miles, almost no daylight…" For a moment the contemplation of such an awful prospect stilled her oft-wagging tongue. (The good woman, it must be observed, could not have given a precise description of Ferndean for love or money.) Her friend nodded sagely. Provoked to vexation by her own misspent concern, she demanded,

"What on earth can they find to _do_ in winter?"

Framed by the well-meaning parishioners' words, spoken in some snug parlor, or in a neighbor's doorway under the lamplight, Ferndean did indeed appear quite a desolate spot. But if a brave soul had chanced to enter the wood, traverse the long drive through the snow-drifts, approach the house, peer in through a window, they should not have seen desolation. They should not have seen despair.

Downstairs a rosy glow issued from the drawing room windows, spilling reflected radiance out onto the snow. On an upper floor, a small, slight figure wrapped in an immense gray shawl glided moth-like down a dusky corridor, twilit by snow-light. A chamber candle flickered to life. A youthful face appeared at the window – smiling, contented, looking with the young's capacity for wonder out at the white landscape.

Beside the window stood a lady's dressing table, adapted for use as a writing desk. The small white hands belonging to the figure with the smiling face began to move items about on its surface – a glass inkwell, pens, pencils, a book of drawing paper, a stub of candle, a withered flower – seeking something. The fingers lit on a page upon which writing appeared, the ink darker and thicker in some places, in others very faint, and in others no ink at all, only the words' impressions. The page was taken up, held close to be read.

It was a letter, or rather, the ghost of a letter, already completed and sent several months past, leaving behind this under-page onto which the ink had bled and the pen scratched.

_My dears, I am so happy I believe I smile all day long! My husband teases me that if I persist with this expression my mouth will freeze and stay fast and I will live to regret it. He will not admit that he is the cause of my joy, and yet it is so, as I am the cause of his._

_The sorrow of that dreadful year clings still to him somewhat, but to me his manner has not changed. I speak, and he listens, without condescension – without grudge. I listen, and he speaks with eagerness, omitting no detail, glossing over no novelty, never failing to pause for description, explanation, a chance to broaden an inexperienced, unworldly mind with new images, thoughts, ideas. _

_My presence, my speech, is never irksome to him. I laugh freely now. I curtail no expression of affection, no fond caress. No oppression haunts me. No sense of degradation or obscurity hounds my footsteps. My hands are no longer cold and empty._

Jane thought no more of the articles she had come to retrieve, of the cold that even now nipped through her thick wrappings. She sank into the chair and read the words again, and then again.

She had written that she was happy, but never before had she fully appreciated the imprecision of the word. Happiness was not a fixed state, a condition of perpetual contentment to be striven toward and attained. Her happiness was a living thing, a mobile, flitting thing that changed constantly, now restive and giddy, now aching, now sweet and pure as the warmth of Edward's smile washing over her.

Still, there were things she had not written of in her letters. She did not write, for instance, of her early fears that she, so small and girlish of form, so inexperienced, would not be enough for him, who had known women of great beauty and passion, and later, of her doubts that she would ever again be able to pass a calm day while in his presence, when the merest touch, the merest brush of his fingers or lips against her skin incensed such tides of desire within her.

She did not write of the nights she woke to her husband's weeping and lay clasping his sleeping form, murmuring into his ear until the sorrow passed or he awoke, so desperately apologetic, so distressed at her witnessing his own deep-rooted depression that it became her turn to weep, his to comfort.

He had had to learn how to live again. Not to merely exist, but to live consciously; not from moment to moment, as he had at Thornfield, relishing afterwards the intensity of those fleeting instances he had spoken with her, seen her wide eyes meet his, watched as she opened to him, unfurling like a rose, his heart afire, but to experience a lifetime's intensity burning in every moment, to understand that every second with her was a culmination of all that had come before, good and bad. He made a concerted effort to exercise deliberation. He confided everything. He turned his mind and tongue from bleak subjects. He talked of the world, and of living and of her. He let her lead him out on long walks and asked her to describe for him all the creatures that she saw, all the colors and sounds and lives. He let her tease smiles out of him, let her provoke him to laughter, and when the sound came, hearty and ringing from his throat like a release, it did not sound forced. Yet somewhere, buried deep or perhaps just under the surface, the darkness still waited, and on the nights when he retreated back into his old despair and she lay stroking the tears from his face, she whispered to him very softly in a voice like a shadow, "I forgive you," – not because he had asked it but because the comfort in the words could not hurt him.

He was still learning. Sorrow was a hard habit to break.

Just before the cold weather set in, he had confessed to her his shame about the state of the house in which she was expected to live, had expressed wonder at her readiness to abide in a ruin with a man who had nearly gone the same way.

"I have so little to give you, my love, and the thought that you should let your youth molder away here, in this remote wreck of a house, for my sake… it is unendurable."

Jane had met his gloomy words in the practical but tender manner that was, she learned, best suited to dissipate these low spirits.

"Are you recommending that we find another house?"

"Ferndean, in its present state, is no home for a young bride. With the advent of winter it shall become more ghastly still. I should be failing in my duties as a husband if I did not recommend we leave. You need only speak the words."

"But you have settled here, Edward. Do you imagine I should wish to bring upon you more upheaval?"

"Think nothing of that. You must think of yourself, and where you can be happiest. Your happiness is all that matters."

"Things are not so bad here as you believe them to be. Certainly it is damp, and some repairs to the roof would not go amiss, but truly darling, unless you wish it I have no desire to live elsewhere."

"You," he said, shaking his head in disbelief, "would put a saint to shame." She laughed at this latest lesson in hyperbole and resisted the temptation to chide him for it, knowing full well it would be of no use.

"You," she returned, "are a shameless flatterer."

She did, however, chide herself, even as she allowed herself to be gathered to him, all but reclining in his arms, in the middle of the afternoon, while the workbox she'd brought with her rested untouched on the floor. This would not do at all. No, it would not do, and it was indeed never her intention to indulge in such behavior, but as the days grew colder and the hours passed at the fireside grew longer, she found herself more and more seated on the arm of his chair, enfolded in his arms, resting against him in a position that could only be called recumbent. In these intimate moments the tasks of the day were forgotten, the greater world consigned to temporary inexistence. The house might crumble around them, the snow might come in drifts and settle about them, but they were untouchable, invulnerable to any danger, any emotion that did not spring from themselves. They had no need of sustenance, of shelter, of any human comfort but what they could find in each other.

And then, inevitably, the world would resume. She would return to her sewing or sketching or planning, never one for idleness, and he would return to his talk, never voluntarily taciturn, but ever after, for the duration of the day, there was that peace, separate from them, but present.

Jane gazed upon the ghost-letter and felt herself seized by an emotion almost melancholical in nature. The few lines her pen had made there – accidental, unaware – meant so much and yet said so little. There existed no words for a love such as hers. There was nothing in language to express it. This she had learned. She could not share it, she could not give of it. It belonged to herself and Edward only. But perhaps, after all, that was right.

Downstairs the clock chimed the quarter-hour. She had kept him waiting too long. She opened the desk drawer to place the precious letter inside, and there she found the pieces of linen, still wrapped in tissue and ribbon. Moving swiftly now, she put away the letter, gathered up her sewing box, the bundle of linen and her narrow taper. Her shawl fluttered out behind her as she hurried to the door, and then the chamber went dark.

As she entered the drawing room and caught a glimpse of him before he was aware of her – but only a few seconds before, for his senses were sharp, and his ability to detect her presence a sense in its own right, the sharpest of them all. The seconds were enough. His frame was relaxed, but not with listlessness, expectant, but not impatient. He had enough in himself to sustain him in her brief absences. The light was within him now and not so easily quenched. She had given him that. He rose – a chivalrous habit that charmed even as it amused her by its formality, as though he were a suitor, or a stranger, rather than her own heart, her own flesh and bone – and his face, soft and warm in the firelight, greeted her return. She went to him and felt his hand come around her waist, drawing her to him in a wordless embrace as he sat down again and she with him. The box of embroidery was relegated to its accustomed place on the floor beside her empty chair.

Above the mantle there hung a tarnished mirror in a gilt frame, and into this mirror she could now look quite directly. And when Jane saw what was reflected, she had to turn and glance behind her to ascertain that it was true, for something of an old childhood

superstition still lingered: that the living figure and the reflection were not always of the same being, that the reflection might have an existence all its own, and powers beyond what any mortal could conceive. But here was no mischief, no witchery. Here was only the twilit parlor, and the glow of the fire, and Edward's face, and hers.


	2. Chapter 2

Despite her desire to be practical, it had been impossible, at first, for Jane to see her life at Ferndean in terms of the tangible, of the material. As if it were but a reflection in a glass, in a basin of water, or the dream shadows on a wall that lose form in the light of day, she was afraid to hold it too closely, to claim it too entirely. What had been given her seemed too great a thing to not suffer impermanence. It was Promethean – a thing intended for gods but surely not men, so fragile, so easily damaged. Even Edward, who faced her each day with the marks of his mortality branded on his skin, had seemed unreal, and she had secretly feared him as a teasing vestige of a hope better abandoned. In her life she had known so much journeying that now she could not shake the feeling of transience, as though, if she gazed too long, kissed him too often, drank of his rich, mellow voice too eagerly, the strain of so much fulfillment would shatter her world like glass. She remembered well this early timidity, how frequently she had to stop herself as she went about her days, noting the backward glances, the soft steps, the pausing to listen – was he still there, still there where she'd left him? She remembered the rolling over in bed, looking at him through squinting eyes that feigned sleep, just in case she should be caught; just in case she should start awake and find herself elsewhere, and him a dream. She remembered the kisses stolen in the early mornings when he was still asleep, while her mind made a study of his face on the pillow, his hair tumbling untidily across his forehead, the way his lashes, long and dark, made little shadows over his cheeks, shielding and shading the beautiful eyes that could no longer see her. She learned him by heart, a precaution against future calamity, that she would always have him, whatever happened. And when the tentative glances grew bolder, when superstition faded and was effaced by joy, she had wanted nothing but to live entirely in the present, accepting every day for the small miracle it was, blessing every hour that ended as it had begun: with a full heart, a glistening eye, an ear ringing with the sound of his voice.

Now, as the first flush eased into a blissful underlying warmth, now as winter settled over England, it was finally safe to begin planning for the future.

For all his past flouting of convention, he had insisted upon a strict observance where she was concerned. She was to have all that befitted her as his wife. She was to have fine gowns, a monthly allowance, a lady's maid if she wished (which she did not, and firmly refused), and her initials on the family linen. Not a month after their union, Edward had generously arranged, albeit with her assistance, for her inheritance to be placed in a private trust, accessible to herself only. Furthermore, he encouraged her to make any changes and improvements she desired with regard to the furnishings and decorating of the rooms.

"You are mistress of this house," he had told her. "I should like nothing more than for you to feel at home in it."

"My home is where you are," she'd replied simply, "and you are here."

Yet she had been secretly pleased at his deference to her tastes, and as Autumn gave way, parcels began to arrive in the post, from London and nearby Millcote and some from the more distant mill towns in the north, filled with samples of fashionable textiles, and wallpaper in the latest patterns. During the shortening afternoons, she sat with Edward before the fire and poured over them, taking time to describe the colors and shapes carefully and extensively, so that he might help her make the selections. "Never before," he would tease her, "has such painstaking consideration been given to any room in which I have dwelled. I confess, I had not thought that such a difference existed between plum and amethyst, but I understand now the variations are of infinite importance."

The renovation was set for the following spring, and meantime, Jane took a full inventory of the house, from attic to cellar. No space escaped her attention. Sketchbook under her arm, she had moved through the rooms taking measurements, holding up the scrap samples to bare windows and naked walls to see how they would suit, making notes of what she liked. She remembered how Edward had followed her, his hand on her shoulder, laughing good-naturedly at her enthusiasm as she drew the wraithlike sheets off the furniture as though waking them from a long slumber, sending clouds of dust into the air to hang and catch the pale sunlight. After their walks she lingered outside the house, noting spaces where turf could be dug up and gardens planted, where a few select trees could be removed to let in more light. She filled pages with sketches and plans, discussing each one with him in intimate detail, and her excitement and cheer was so earnest, so natural that he could not help but share it. Her unspoken hope was that, without being aware of it, he might one day come to love Ferndean, not only for her presence there, but for itself.

December brought the first snows of the year and with them a deep, imperturbable chill that emanated from the wood and settled like fog about the house. They were forced to cease their daily walks, and for the first time since their marriage, Jane met with her husband's disapproval, who, fearing the effects of the cold on her delicate frame, expressly forbade her from venturing out with a group of like-minded ladies from the congregation to visit the parish poor. Jane, though disappointed, did not argue, knowing he acted as much out of concern for her as out of fear for himself – for what he would become without her.

The snows continued. Roads became difficult, then nearly impossible to traverse. Jane thought no more of charitable visits, nor even of struggling out to the church on Sunday mornings. There was no going abroad in such weather. Instead, she and Edward drew their chairs up to the parlor fireplace and sat huddled there, positioned as close to the blaze as safety permitted. There together they formed a barricade against the winter. Daily she kept watch for the torments that beset him – the aching in his left arm, which had begun with the cold and was a constant reminder of the ravaging his body had endured; the guilt he felt over her isolation, now made complete by their snowbound situation. She knew he feared her restlessness – the potential for it, lurking within her, spurred by their particular circumstances – knew he dreaded, beyond all else, that the confinement indoors, the hours she was obliged to spend with him, talking with him, reading to him, aiding him, sitting by him, lying with him, with no respite or opportunity for distraction, would wear away her wifely patience, her youthful affection.

She had no qualms about letting him fill her world, but for his sake she bethought herself of ways to draw his mind away from the gathering troubles, to draw him beyond the house and himself to where he had lived fully, a witness to life's vibrancy.

"Tell me of Vienna," she would say, and they would be off. The winter twilight around them would fade, and he would be leading her down broad avenues flanked by stately white edifices, stopping to enter a concert hall where the rich strains of some great master came wafting to their ears, pausing by the grand residence of the emperor, straying into a fine park to watch the city's ladies and gentlemen promenade by. During that winter she roamed all the great cities of Europe at his side, learned the names of places and things seen only through his eyes, gazed upon with his gaze.

By way of these armchair travels, these fireside explorations embarked upon together, Edward gradually came to see – or rather, to know, with a great swell of gratitude and relief – that he need not fear the house being to small, or his sole company too meager. What there was, what he had to give her, was enough, and she expressed her contentment in a hundred small ways: not only by her eager listening (to which he always reacted with a deep inner delight, associating past memories of a curious upturned young face, of wide green eyes that hung on to his every word as though he spoke a gospel of the world) but by the absolute ease of her manner in all things, which hinted at no inner upset, no secret longing for things he could not provide. He was sustained by this assurance of her happiness and found himself able, at long last, to begin envisioning a broadening path before him, down which lay the promise of hope. He was a living man once more.

A picture of pleasing domesticity could be seen in the parlor this afternoon. It boasted nothing extraordinary to the eye, and to the ear the words exchanged were such as are found in commonplace conversation, though perhaps the epithets were more tender than mere cordiality demanded. A stranger looking on would note nothing awry in the young woman's pause, would detect nothing but mundane politeness in the man's attention as she spoke of retrieving some linen from upstairs. And so they would move on, perhaps, their curiosity quelled. Or perhaps…yes, perhaps, they might stay, and glimpse a shard of heaven.

Jane had already risen from her chair, but before she could as much as stir in the direction of the door, he caught her hand and stayed her. Rising himself, he touched her shoulder, and when his fingers met with only the thin wool of her gown, frowned. She realized her mistake at once. She might have known he would remember, most especially when she herself did not. From the very beginning he had predicted her needs and desires with an insight that was almost uncanny. In the chill, grey mornings, if he felt her begin to rise, he begged her to stay put while he ventured out of the warm cocoon of covers to fetch her dressing gown from where it lay draped over a chair before the fire, that she might be spared those few moments of cold. In the afternoons it was he who asked if there were enough coals on the fire, who urged her to put on more if her reply betrayed the slightest hesitation. And at night, it was he who insisted she bathe first, that the water would be warmest for her. He fought the cold on her behalf with the passion of a personal vendetta. It was but one of the ways in which he showed his love.

Edward reached toward her chair, caught the thick gray material of the shawl and wordlessly wrapped it around his wife like it was something his love had spun.

"Thank you, darling," she said.

He smiled his welcome. He asked nothing of her – elicited no promise to be quick, made no effort to delay her – and perhaps for that reason, before quitting the parlor with her candle, she lifted her hand to his face and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

The clock in the hall chimed the hour as she passed it and started up the stairs. In the ringing silence that followed it, how still the house was – only the sound of her gown brushing over the treads reached her ears. No noise from the kitchen, none from the parlor. The snow outside seemed to muffle even the inner traces of life. But the warmth of his touch remained, the image of his smiling face lingered, a ray of sunshine in the chill corridor. These moments alone were scarce and precious, not because she relished being absent from him, even for an instant, but because every small parting brought a reunion when, coming again before him, letting the idea of Edward's simply _being_ surge through her, she would be struck anew by the joy and improbability of it, as though they were two old friends meeting in a crowd. As she grew day by day ever closer to him, she willed that this feeling of overwhelmed awareness might never fade.

Jane entered their chamber and at once found herself drawn to the window, to the beauty of the snow. Such whiteness! Such a cold, pure, glimmering light it cast! She knew he had resented it, seeing in it oppression, isolation, fearing it would breed discontent in her, flakes landing around her like so many apples of discord. He had been afraid the snow would show her that he was not enough, that he could never be enough. He need not have feared. If anything, the snow had revealed to her the simplicity of her needs. To live, to suspire, she needed nothing and no one but him.

As the short winter day drew toward its close and the fire burned the brighter in the purple dusk she would sit by his side and begin the much-prolonged embroidery, and every stitch that spelled her initial or his would be another joining, another thread in the knot that was their shared destiny. And at evening's end a hot bath would be waiting, and when they had both soaked up as much heat as they could hold within them and he had helped her dry her hair before the fire, winding and twisting it through his fingers in his gentle way, they would both climb into the large mahogany bed with its great heavy quilts and its promise of a sheltered repose. And the long dark night would not be long enough for her to show – with words, with touch, with the warmth of her body – all that he was to her.


End file.
